Author: Harvey

I drove to Roxbury on Sunday. I had a variety of justifications for the trip, including picking up my ski pass. It was my only free day this week, and I could have gone to some other hills, but really I just wanted to get back to Plattekill.

Upper mountain lifts weren’t running, so I set my alarm for a reasonable hour. It was almost like I picked up where I’d left off at the end of last year, with a casual spring skiing approach. A benefit of the delayed start, when I took my break on the NY Thruway, the sun was up and Starbucks was open.

I knew there wasn’t much natural snow on the ground in the Catskills, but on Saturday the radar showed snowfall in the air and the slopes looked enticing to me on the Plattekill webcam.

I was conflicted about this trip. I wanted to ski the snow from the most recent winter storm before it got wet. On the other hand, I could only ski Friday, and it felt like a lot of gas for one guy to burn for a day. I was looking at my options: Magic and Gore.

World’s longest traffic light

Both mountains are just about the same distance from me, and frankly they are beyond the reach of a reasonable day trip. Magic reported 16-23 inches of snow from the last storm. Gore reported 14 inches, and they measure at the base, so the numbers looked comparable. Snow reporting aside, from the radar I saw, it looked like SoVT got several hours of snowfall after it shut down in New York.

Without an official announcement about Opening Day, Gore’s status was a mystery last week. On Tuesday, there was a story published that had all three New York state ski areas opening on the 23rd. It seemed to catch many by surprise.

Snowpack at 1900 feet

With most of the 20 inches recorded season to date still on the ground, and other mountains to the south, east and west slated to open, it seem likely that Gore could and would open too. Finally, on Thursday the governor said “make it so.”

Friday I headed north and stopped at my traditional spot, the Sbarro in Sloatsburg on the New York Thruway. I saw an excited first post from new member of the forum: “Gore is opening the summit!!”